Life in the Audition Room — Stephen Legawiec

This year, I watched 4,000 audition pieces.

Actually it wasn’t even over the course of the year. Just a few weeks in September and then just last weekend.

For the last five years I have been attending the Unified Professional Theatre Auditions (UPTA) in Memphis, where I see almost 900 actors over the course of four days. This year it was virtual, as was the case last year, which means we are watching audition links. In fact, it is happening this very week.

But I am also a screener for the UPTAs, which means that every September I watch YouTube videos of almost 1000 actors trying to qualify for those auditions. (Last September, my daughter wandered into the room where I was screening and she said, “Oh, is it that time of year again?”) And each actor does two audition pieces. So all told, that’s about 4000.

Beautiful Memphis. If you’re there, visit Charlie Vergo’s Rendezvous for BBQ and ribs.

This does not include callbacks.

I’ve been doing this in some form or another since 1987, when I started attending the New England Theatre Conference (NETC) in Boston and the Straw Hats in New York.

I forget who said this - maybe Michael Shurtleff, who wrote the bible on auditions - but someone said that actors and producers all agree that if there was a better way for casting to happen, we would all do it. Most actors hate auditioning and I don’t blame them. But no one has thought of a better way.

But I wanted to talk, not about every audition situation here, but just what actors refer to as the “cattle call” audition. Anyone who has watched a full season of American Idol has a taste of what it is like. To get a better idea, binge watch American Idol for 8 hours a day for four days. Without commercials.

I will be talking here mostly about the UPTAs because I currently attend those and it is extraordinarily well-run. The actors and producers are exceedingly well taken care of by the UPTA organizers. And, to my mind, UPTA is the gold standard for this kind of audition. Pre-Covid, actors and producers generally stay at the Memphis Sheraton (at their own expense) and shuttle buses take us to and from the theatre, Playhouse on the Square, 10 minutes away from where the auditions are held.

This is a unified audition, like the NETCs, the SETCs, the Straw Hats, or the A1 conference. The auditions take place in a theatre (in non-pandemic years) and representatives of a hundred or so theatres will watch the same actors at the same time. A new actor comes on stage every two minutes, does two audition pieces, usually a monologue and a song, and then the next actor comes in.

For eight hours a day.

These actors are almost all fresh out of school, or in their early twenties and are from all over the country. You don’t get many older actors at these, and by “older,” I mean age 30 and up. This seems to be a young person’s game. These are early-career actors who are just getting into the business and are still “perfecting their craft” as the phrase goes.

When I tell the schedule to people, theatre folks or not, they usually say, “How can you do this?” You need to get a lot of sleep (of course, not during the auditions), but also, I’ve been doing this for so long it seems kind of normal. And, frankly, I just like watching auditions. I always have. I learn a lot. But you do need a marathon mindset.

Although I did this very thing from the other side when I was a young actor, I have a hard time re-imagining what that was like. To work up an audition and travel across the country and spend a day somewhere for something that only takes 90 seconds. And then it’s over. 90 seconds for them, 32 hours for us. Our experiences of the same event are so different.

All of us hope for many callbacks, of course. But that is not guaranteed.

Some organizations give a list of guidelines for the actor as to what to do and what not to do in these auditions. And now, of course, you can find an endless list of YouTube videos giving good audition advice to actors.

Included in some of this material is a list of overdone speeches and songs. This is not a fixed list, it changes with the times. There are audition blogs that regularly update overdone speech and song lists. In the 80s we would hear the dreaded “Chunky Turkey Soup” monologue from the play Say Goodnight Gracie all the time. There are many such examples from that time period, but that might be the winner. However, I never hear that speech anymore.

The trouble with overdone monologues is that once you hear the speech done extremely well, you might then be mentally comparing it with all of the other actors who you’ll see do it. This is particularly true of funny speeches. You know where all of the comedy is in a speech, and you wonder why some actors can’t find those moments.

I was guilty of all sorts of audition blunders when I was an actor. In fact, probably every one. I look back now and think, how could I have not known that?

Of course, Shakespeare is another matter. Those speeches are generally all overdone, especially the women’s speeches, because there is probably one good woman’s speech to every ten men’s speeches. That is why women will sometimes do a man’s speech. But in Shakespeare there are other issues that the actor must contend with, like not just understanding the speech, but making us listen to the words.

At the end of the day (which is a long day) it’s still a matter of taste. An actor who I admire as theatrical, another director might see as stagey. Or an actor who another producer might like for their simple truth, I might see as boring. If I’ve heard a speech a million times, I have a different reaction than the person who is hearing it for the first time.

I’ve had actors who I didn’t call back come to the callback room and ask why they were not on my list. I admire the courage it takes to do this. Sometimes I give them feedback if I can. Because actors rarely get feedback on their actual auditions. And sometimes I hear their audition pieces again. But frequently I say, “you’re a talented actor, but not what I am looking for.” Which is true.

And it all depends on what you are casting. If you are casting Mrs. Lovett or Blanche Dubois, you are looking for actors who can do certain things or have certain qualities. But if you are looking for an actor who can do both Mrs. Lovett and Blanche Dubois in your rep season, it’s different as well.

It’s been said (many times) that you can tell in the first 10 seconds whether the actor is any good or not. When put that way, that comment sounds a little harsh. But what you see in the first 10 seconds is likely to be borne out by the remaining 80 seconds.

When you see 900 actors, essentially in a row, you’re going to think that some are good, some are not good, and the vast majority are in between. And you are constantly forming comparisons. So one actor, coming after a string of excellent auditioners, may not come across as well, than if they had followed a string of weak auditioners.

That said, I see some amazing auditions every time out. The kind where you forget what you are there for because the actor is so compelling, charismatic, or entertaining. You get sucked in like a magnet on steel.

I saw a singer take a very dramatic song, one we all knew, and she decided to make it funny just by the way she sang it. It was spectacular.

I also saw an actress do Phebe from “As You Like It” (“Think not that I love him…”), a monologue that I must have seen on literally a hundred occasions, and she made me think that I was seeing it for the very first time.

These examples frequently demonstrate, not just the acting talent of the auditioners, but their extraordinary inventiveness. And ultimately, isn’t that the actor you’d like to work with?

I admire all the actors who I see at these auditions because it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there. Actors are fed a steady diet of rejection in the face of hard work, years of training, and just trying to exist as artists. Let alone a pandemic. In terms of sheer grit, I’d put their 90 seconds up against our 32 hours any day.